The Core: The Dark Enemy

11. The end of Time

"Look Time, you can't be yanking me away like that. It hasn't even been that long since we last spoke." I complained when Time's hook finally stopped pulling on me through the emptiness between dimensions.

"I..." I utter before I notice that I can actually see. All around my bodiless form there are windows of sight into parts of the outside world inside the next dimension where Time exists. I can't, at first, make heads or tails out of what I am seeing through each of the many view portals until a common theme finally comes into focus.

These are all points of view that Time has from eyes around his body, and they all are seen from different moments in time.

Regardless of this fact, one thing quickly becomes apparent as, within each of the windows, Time stumbles and falls to his knees. Time was cradling something in one of its hands and was trying to push it into a hole in the ground.

"Time! Buddy, talk to me! What is going on?"

"It is done. My children will find the light. They will finally fulfill their purpose."

The viewing portals around me slowly started to frost the longer I watched them. Time was expending all of its remaining energy to force its hand and arm down into the strange hole.

"Awaken them and bring them to the source of my destruction. You will find what you need there."

"Look, you didn't say that you were going to die this fast!" I shouted, trying to get Time to focus on me and to be coherent long enough for me to understand what it was doing. Instead of answering me I was suddenly washed back inside the darkspace that I was within while I was speaking to the seven all at once. I could hear their voices speaking again, just as though I was indeed back in the same moment.

"Agreed. Time is running out. Two of us will die soon, leaving too few to hold the Void's attention. They will spread again, and the shield will fall." the floating spiky rock creature said.

"We are out of options. Out of Time." said the Eldritch abomination.

This time around I heard and understood what they were saying correctly. Time was on death's door, and it had summoned me here right before it was about to die. I didn't know who the second being was that they were talking about, but it was clear who the first was.

I could feel it all around me, like a shuddering of a great being's last breath. It came in ripples, and I could tell that if I didn't get out of its shared space before it ended, that I would join it in death as well.

"Hey! Can you please send me back?"

"Yes..." Came a soft reply as Time forced even more of its arm, all the way to its emaciated shoulder, into the hole. I could feel the sharp cold rippling around my mind and bodiless form. It was getting darker as Time's body was shutting down. Something, some many things, had covered its body and was drawing its remaining life force away. Whatever it was, it was cold, and it had the ability to trade life force for frozen death.

"Am I going to die as well?"

"...no..." comes an even softer reply as lucid thoughts become hard to manifest. My mind was being pulled in so many directions and my memories were flying all around my mind. It almost felt like Time was looking for something within the moments of the last day spent on earth. It was trying to show me something before it faded away into oblivion.

My moments at my parents' house flew in reverse and was quickly followed by my ages spent in VR under my Prime Speed Control key, using my swarm to protect my home planet. Everything rewound quickly to the moment right as the light had burst forth from the Void Seedling surrounding me, pulling it all back into the seedling and causing Time to utter its next words. Words that I now realized were from before when we had met in the company of the seven. It hadn't been answering me at the time to any questions that I had asked at first. Its sentence of "Yes, no, you made the trade." was all for this moment.